East Meets West Social Worker
Make home a safe place to thrive, not just survive.
As loving moms and dads, we all want to believe that we’re raising our wonderful kids in a loving home environment. We’ve given our kids almost everything that we did not have in our own childhoods–more stuff, more understanding, and more playtime. But why are the kids still acting out? Don’t they know any better? Can’t they just be grateful for all that we parents go through to insulate them from our own suffering and give them the childhoods that we didn’t have but wanted?
And yet, I’ve read some gruesome personal accounts from adults who recalled the unsafe home of their childhoods. For example, one man wrote:
My Dad was a serious “type A,” alcoholic, verbally abusive and emotionally disconnected. My mom was a wonderful, gentle soul, but mentally unstable. My parents did not protect me from the bullying. I was expected to “tough it out.”
My earliest memory of being bullied was when I was in first grade. It wasn’t until I was in third grade that my mom went to school to “talk to my class”. Suffice it to say that it was a complete and utter disaster and had the exact opposite effect of what I am sure she was trying to accomplish. It got worse. I didn’t tell her it got worse because even then I knew that she was just doing what moms do… She was trying to protect her child.
My kids didn’t learn the right way to deal with bullies either. I won’t always be around to lose my shit and come barreling out of the house when other kids start trouble. I don’t want them to learn to depend on other people to fight their battles, but I also don’t want them to think they have to be an aggressive jerk to deal with the bullies of the world.
In all these examples, it was not the child that acted out so much as the parent. The well meaning, otherwise loving grownups that run the households have behaviors that are not conducive to bully-proofing their own kids. And what is this thread they each have in common? Loving caregivers can also lose self control and resort to tactics that backlash on their kids. Periodic losing your cool is expected–just ask my kids about them. But periodic recovering from losing your cool would be important, if not humbling–just ask me. Parents who are either emotionally withdrawn or unstable, or who swing back at their kids’ bullies too far, unwittingly cause an equal and opposite reaction. These parents are just surviving their own emotional crises.
We cannot teach our children to thrive in life if all they witness are caregivers who model crisis behavior, back and forth like a swinging pendulum, tit for tat, hurt to anger and back to hurt, shame to fear or anger and back to shame. Human behaviors? Yes. Understandable? Absolutely. But helpful? No. When kids have to worry about their parent’s well being, preventing unintended side effects, or even protecting their parents from the truth, then they are left alone to fend for themselves in this often cruel, confusing world. They become easier victims of the next bully or child molester.
Make your home safe by being a strong parent who will not fall apart when someone teases or insults your child. You will not go bury your head in the sand and pretend that you didn’t see, nor will you be the bully yourself shaming other kids. Take action calmly and thoughtfully. Give yourself some grace to make mistakes as you are trying your best to protect your kids from other kids who are out of control with their manners, moods, or actions.
Next week, I will discuss more about how to teach kids emotional intelligence/emotion regulation, which is essential of thriving in this life.
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